About the anvilfire.com Store The new anvilfire store now uses a shopping cart system with Secure Server and secure credit card transactions through Cardservice International. Our Secure Certificate Previously we had out secure server cert through one of the most popular cert providers Thawte of South Africa. We always thought this was a peculiar arrangement since most of the e-com was in the US. However, Thawte had an office in Raleigh, NC and so we were dealing semi-localy. Thawte was then bought out by Network Solutions, the folks that became rich when they had a government monopoly on the domain registration business. Network Solutions is infamous for shady business dealings such as pre-selling domains that are due to expire to name merchants. For this reason (having been burned badly) we have moved ALL our domain registrations to other friendlier, more economical and trustworthy companies. Network Solutions and Thawte were then bought by the financial giant Verisign who was also in the secure cert business. This created somewhat of a monopoly in the secure cert business. The buyout did not change the way Network Solutions did business. So you have the security "experts" in bed with crooks and the whole is a near monopoly. After four years of having our cert with Thawte they decided not to renew our cert after having taken our money because they had some paperwork problems. We could not sort them out with their new "office" in India where they have out-sourced their customer service and the girl there had to ask how to spell "webmaster". For all the reasons above (monopoly, crooked dealings, high fees, poor communications) we have gone to another Secure Cert provider CAcert of Australia. What IS a Secure Certificate? A secure certificate is nothing more than a small encrypted block of text that is used to control the communications protocol between a server and a browser. When it exists with the secure server code on the server your browser transmits data to the server in an encrypted stream where it is decrypted on the server. Automatic recognition of the certificate is determined by deals between your browser provider (Microsoft or AOL) and the cert provider. A secure certificate has nothing to do with the security of the server. It only controls the secure transmission of data to the server. The big cert issuers do credit and business license checks on the company requesting the cert and little more. However, it does nothing to insure that the people you are dealing with are trustworthy or not. They just have good credit. Trust In the end you are the one that must decide if you trust the on-line business you are dealing with. We have been in business for over thirty years, on-line for seven and operated an on-line store for four. All our credit card transactions go through Cardservice International one of the most trusted names in the business. If you trust doing business with us then click "Accept this certificate forever (until it expires)" in the window that pops up. Your browser will then trust the issuer of the certificate and not ask again. Thank you for taking time to read our rant about secure certificates. Orders may also be placed by mail, phone or FAX. anvilfire.com! Dempsey's Forge 1684 Mitchell Mill Road Gladys, VA 24554-2938 USA    336.367.3499 Click icons for more information * Contact Us * Secure Server Info